Saturday, 27 November 2010

7 KDE Apps to Get After Installing Kubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

Yakuake - Quake-like terminal application - full review
This is a great replacement console for the default Konsole which ships with KDE and implicitly with Kubuntu. The great thing about Yakuake is that is uses a Quake-style show/hide function, which can be accessed by default using the F12 keyboard shortcut. Press F12 to show the terminal, do you work, then hide it again when you don't need it anymore. Yakuake supports profiles (which can be configured the same way like a Konsole profile), global shortcuts, allows to change default size and animation speed, it supports skins, transparency, start-up options (like start with window shown or hidden), transparency. Supported are also multiple tabs, which can be switched by pressing Shift+Right/Left Arrow.Homepage

sudo apt-get install yakuake

Yakuake 2.9.7

BasKet - powerful notes taking application - full reviewBasKet Note Pads is one of the applications that I fell in love with immediately after trying it, ever since it was available only for KDE3. For those who didn't try it yet, BasKet is feature-rich and powerful notes-taking application, but not only. It's not your ordinary notes application, it has much more to it. The workspace can organise your notes in one or more columns, or in custom (free) positions, it supports tags, inserting of images, links, launchers to applications or other disk locations, backup or restore BasKet archives, importing to various notes formats (included here are plain text files, KNotes, Sticky Notes, Tomboy), exporting to HTML file. The configuration window allows to enable/disable the system tray, configure global actions, animate changes in baskets, change the appearance of notes. All in all, if simple is not enough for you and a minimalist application like KNotes doesn't suffice, BasKet is definitely the KDE4 application for it, allowing to build complex projects rather than only text notes.Homepage

sudo apt-get install basket

BasKet 2.0 Beta

Kdenlive - powerful video editorKdenlive is a very powerful video editor for KDE4 which bundles a big number of video editing features. It comes with a wide range video and audio effects, support for camcorders and cameras, multitrack support, exporting to formats like PAL, NTSC, h264.Homepage

sudo apt-get install kdenlive

Kdenlive 0.7.8

Krusader - full-featured file manager - full reviewEver since the KDE3 days Krusader was usually the first choice when someone would ask for a replacement for Konqueror. Krusader uses by default a twin-panel interface, and ships with all the whistles and bells one would expect from a complete file manager. It includes support for user actions, including creating archives, calculate checksums, split or combine files, mass rename of files, show previews, sort files by various properties, synchronise directories, search, locate, profiles, tabs, shortcuts, sessions, bookmarks. Krusader is also highly configurable.Homepage

sudo apt-get install krusader

Krusader 2.2.0 Beta

VLC - complete video playerIn my opinion there are three major players for KDE: Kaffeine, SMPlayer and VLC, and all three are very good, and this time I chose VLC, one of the most popular movie players out there, and not only on the Linux platform. VLC offers anything you would expect from a media player, support for DVDs and HD formats, ISO DVD images, audio and video settings, bookmarks, subtitles, effects, plugins, playlists, minimal view mode. The preferences window allows to configure and change the way VLC looks and feels, OSD, volume normalization, hotkeys.Homepage

sudo apt-get install vlc

VLC 1.1.4

digiKam - photo management applicationdigiKam is the ultimate photo management application for KDE, with support for a wide range of cameras, importing from PicasaWeb, Facebook, SmugMug or a remote computer, and exporting to a variety of services. It organises photos in albums, itoffers image processing tools and effects, and it's highly configurable.Homepage

sudo apt-get install digikam

DigiKam 1.4.0

Clementine - KDE4 port of Amarok 1.4 - full reviewKubuntu comes with Amarok 2.2.0, but if you're happier with the look and feel of the older Amarok 1.4, Clementine is the perfect replacement. It offers an interface similar to the one of the KDE3 version of Amarok, and currently it integrates a pretty fair amount of features. Clementine comes with a file browser, radio support, Last.fm song submission, sortable playlists, cover manager, equalizer, cross-fading, tray icon integration, OSD, music library. Considering it isn't included in the Ubuntu Maverick repositories, here is a tutorial I've put up a while ago to install it.HomepageTutorial - Install Clementine in Kubuntu 10.10

10 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Seriously... Did this have to be Kubuntu specific? This applies to any Linux installation that uses KDE. This is what the non-buntu users cry about. The users of *buntu distros seem to have blinders on that any other Linux distro exists. Fact is, there are lots of them...

If you are running a Linux distro less "mainstream" than one of the *buntus, then it is up to you to do a little bit of homework to adapt the instructions for your distro of choice. Fact is, not every app is packaged for every distro. Making an article like this more distro specific lets the readers have that expectation that the instructions are going to work with what they have installed.

I was going to say something similar to the person above, but no need now.

But, to reiterate a little bit anyway, it is much, much simpler to target the most popular distro (by far) when you're doing guides and reviews with installation instructions than it is to try and cover, as mentioned, the hundreds of distros (and several DE's) that are out and about.

It's all the better when many of the instructions for Ubuntu are often close fits for Linux Mint (the 3rd most popular), Debian (~5th), aptosid (~25th), and others.

Anyway, just as we should respect your right to choose the least popular distro (if you want!) you should respect others right to write on their most favorite! :)

Well duh! They are all debian based distros so why shouldn't the commands apply?(close fits? You mean exactly the same right?)

Is it so hard to say debian based distros? But I guess saying *buntu automatically puts rainbow farting unicorns in the article to pull pageviews.

FWIW enabling all the default mandriva repos and replacing "apt-get install" for "urpmi" gets you those apps in Mandriva based distros obviously. And replacing "apt-get install" for "yum install" does the same for Fedora based sistros. But I guess that's too hard of a thing for a *buntu user to understand.

To all haters:What your doing is not constructive, if you really want to make a difference write your own blog post as it would have been written."Copy, modify and share."Is one of the greate thing of FOSS!!